Extra time* is football/soccer’s equivalent to “overtime” in basketball, hockey, or American football. For those watching or attending a match, extra time means more fun** for free!
That’s what I want to give YOU, for being so kind as to read my books and lend me your email address.
If you enjoy these extras, or if you have bonus-material suggestions, please let me know at avery@averycockburn.com. My aim is to open up the Warriors’ world to readers as much as possible. See, I believe books can be more than passive entertainment; when we feel truly connected to a fictional world, reading can feel like spending the day with friends.
And unlike real-life friends, the Glasgow Lads will never steal your boyfriend or beg you to bail them out of jail.
UPDATE December 2018:
Original (silly) beginning to Playing in the Dark (Book 4, Evan & Ben). Fun but totally unrealistic. PDF opens in new tab.
PREVIOUS UPDATES (in chronological order):
- Play On deleted scenes, lovingly rendered on appropriate simulated paper:
- Comments from Play On beta readers, each represented by a Game of Thrones character:
- Find out why and how I changed the above scenes.
- Read the funniest and most insightful comments from those who helped make the book what it is today.
- Spikk Doric!
- A video series teaching words and phrases from Scotland’s North East, home of Play On‘s Brodie Campbell.
- This “Doric rap” is a MUST SEE. My advice? Watch it once in pure awe, then watch it again whilst reading along with the lyrics (available in the Show More section beneath the video). Then take a moment to mentally thank me for curbing Brodie’s Doric vocabulary.
- Playing for Keeps image collages (PDFs will open in new tabs or download immediately):
- Significant real-life settings from the book, including Fergus’s and John’s homes (hooray for real-estate sites!). NOTE: this file is 7.5MB due to all the lovely photos, so be warned if you’re on a limited data plan or a slow connection.
- “Wordle”: a brainstorming exercise outlined in Denise Jaden’s Thirty-Day Novel, Each image or piece of word art represents one of the book’s themes. I made this during the planning stages of Playing for Keeps, then hung it on my wall for inspiration.
- Videos
- “The Wee ‘Hings,” a short-film love letter to the city of Glasgow, shown at the opening ceremonies of the 2014 Commonwealth Games. The filmmaker, 19-year-old student Iain Henderson, answered the question, “What Makes Glasgow Great?” Be sure to click Show More for lyrics. (“Just remember: ye cannae shove yer granny aff the bus!”)
- The best rendition of James Curran’s “Fitba Crazy,” by Adam McNaughtan. This is the song the Warriors adapted for the charity match’s viral promotional video.
- “How to Wear a Kilt“, brought to you by Slaters menswear department, featuring a model who’s a dead ringer for John Burns. I’m particularly fond of the pink boxer briefs. I mean, if one MUST wear something beneath a kilt…
- Lord Andrew’s Narcissistic Personality Quiz Results (PDF format), courtesy of Psychcentral.com. I took this quiz on behalf of Andrew last January and was very amused at the results.
- Character pics: see my Character Casting Couch Pinterest board
- Videos
- “The woman who made up her mind” (aka “Patronising BT Lady”), Better Together’s not-so-well-thought-out advert which spawned so (“Remember the leopards“) many (“Tom Tucker”) parodies (“I’m Just a Girl”).
- Chapter 24’s rickshaw rider, Peter Thompson, and our “Imperial Masters”: Original video by Thompson himself.
- Audio: What a loon sounds like. Click on “pair wail” to hear what Colin heard at the Dunleven loch that night. Close your eyes when you listen, and if the sound doesn’t give you chills and/or make you cry, then you might want to have your ears (or your soul) looked at.
- Deleted scenes from Playing for Keeps (PDF format):
- Original ending to hotel scene (kilted sex), in which Fergus & John discuss the promo video. I changed this because I wanted them to dwell in the emotion of the moment rather than hurry on to practical matters.
- John’s interview with asylum seeker Beatrice. I decided having her visit the Warriors to tell her story would be more interesting. The original version contains more details I thought readers might like to hear.
- My marked-up manuscript of the Fergus Odyssey scene from “Play It Safe.” (~12MB, PDF format) It features multicolored highlights, some background info, and badly handwritten notes such as “Trim this” and “What a Mess!” Might be of particular interest to fellow writers. Apologies for the faint type in the scan. If you zoom in, it should be readable.
- An opposite-point-of-view version of the Playing With Fire scene when Robert and Liam first [redacted to avoid spoilers]. (103KB, PDF format)
- Spotify soundtracks! Enjoy the music that inspired the books (play in order if possible):
- Playing to Win (Book 2, Colin and Andrew)
- Playing With Fire (Book 3, Liam and Robert)
- Extended (steamier) version of Oliver and Luca’s love scene from Throwing Stones. The stuff I didn’t want my mother to read.
*Not to be confused with “added time” or “injury time” or “stoppage time,” terms used to describe the minutes added to the end of every half to make up for time “wasted” during the half. The clock never stops in football/soccer, see, and the officials keep the amount of added time a secret until the end of the half, because they are sadists.
**Or, more commonly, pain